This invention relates to a safety device for surfboards, and specifically to a relatively soft protective covering member for the forward tip of a surfboard, and, in a related aspect, to a safety enhancing kit enclosing a protective tip cover along with suitable means for attaching the cover to a surfboard. The invention is applicable to a wide variety of surfboards, including boards used for wind surfing, which have a sail controlled by a user standing on the board and moving the sail in several dimensions of movement.
Contemporary short surfboards, and surfboards used for wind surfing, have sharply pointed forward tips which can seriously or fatally injure the user of the board upon loss of control of the board during surfing. Typically, after falling or being thrown from a board, the surfer is exposed to substantial danger from the board itself as the latter is tossed about by the enormous amount of energy generated by ocean waves or the like. The hazard may be made worse if the practice of tying the board to the user's ankle to keep the board in the immediate area of the user, so that the board need not be located and retrieved after each so called "wipeout", is practiced.
Despite the obvious and substantial safety hazard presented by these contemporary boards, surfers have resisted attempts to make the boards safer through rounding of the tip or nose portion thereof. This invention provides an alternative safety measure which substantially retains the appearance and performance characteristics of the board, while providing a needed measure of safety for the user. In the present invention, a surfboard tip cover is provided which comprises a generally hollow, substantially V-shaped member which is made of a relatively soft, flexible and resilient silicone material. The device is adapted to fit over the sharply pointed boards and to present an only slightly rounded, yet effective cushion at the tip of the board.
The V-shaped cover may be further characterized in that notch-like slots are provided on upper and lower surfaces of the cover at the juncture between the main body or tip portion and rearwardly extending wing portions thereof which merge into the side surfaces of the board. These slots allow the device to be effectively applied to boards of slightly different sizes and shapes. Different sizes are utilized for boards having significantly different dimensions (e.g. for wind surfing surfboards as opposed to conventional surfboards without sails). The tip cover is designed to be permanently adhered to the tip of the surfboard through the use of suitable means such as silicone adhesive.
The tip cover itself is preferably made of a liquid injected silicone having a durometer A hardness of between about 35 and 40, a tensile strength of about 1000 psi and a tear resistance, Die B, of about pi 175. The rearwardly extending wing portions of the device are feathered along the inside edges thereof to insure smooth merging into the adjacent surfaces of the board.
When employed on wind surfing surfboards, the tip cover has straighter inside wings, and the inside and outside radius of the wings is not round top and bottom, the top being more gradually curved, and the bottom being substantially flat.
A further aspect of the invention is the provision for a complete "after market" kit for increasing the safety of existing surfboards. The kit itself includes a tip cover of the type described above, adhesive means including a priming liquid and a silicone adhesive, a primer applicator and an adhesive applicator. Also included in the kit may be suitable instructions for attaching the tip cover to the surfboard.
Further objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent from an inspection of the drawings and detailed description of the invention which follows.